


Arcade

by Ratzinger



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Deconstruction, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Female-Centric, Gen, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Non-Linear Narrative, Plot, Power Imbalance, Pre-Solo: A Star Wars Story, Qi'ra's POV, Self-Deception, Self-Worth Issues, Sensory Deprivation, Stockholm Syndrome, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-06-23 14:58:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19703728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ratzinger/pseuds/Ratzinger
Summary: Han does not realise just how dirty Qi'ra has been done by luck. And if there are indeed nine hells, hers and Han’s are bound to be of remarkably different sort.She should have grabbed the coaxium and run. As had been her first instinct. She would be somewhere else. Someone else.On some adventure. Without Han.But that is not at all how she had pictured it. And that is not at all how it had gone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot begin to fathom how *done* Qi'ra must be deep down inside. The only way forward in life is onward, though; even if the corpse you have to step over is your own. 
> 
> Do mind, this is not your Disney rendition, and deals with some tough to digest issues in relation to one of the most interesting characters to come out of the new Star Wars instalments.
> 
> I was also beyond amused at the big deal the film made out of all kinds of Han Solo memorabilia, like the dice, for instance. So pardon the almost ironic insertions, which took on a life of their own, given that all that separates Han and Qi'ra is a bit of bad/good luck.
> 
> A few lines of dialogue have been taken from Mur Lafferty's Solo novelization. Further on that in the notes chapter.

‘What are you doing here?’

He is still all heart.

For the first time in what feels like a small eternity, Qi’ra’s lungs give out, and she exhales. Despite having fantasised about this moment many times, she had failed to predict how the _space_ that is opening up in-between the stone walls around her heart still threatens to knock her out, right then and there – in the middle of everything they had ever coveted as children. This feeling inside her does not belong here. These arms, this soft, thick hair against her cheek, the hurriedly shaven skin, and those reliable, _warm_ , incredulous eyes that just cannot believe their _luck_ – none of it fits into the displate, painted world of the First Light.

He is still all heart, and they are not.

‘I work here,’ she says simply. That is, technically, true.

She cannot fault him for looking as bewildered as he does, though; she barely recognises herself these days when she passes a mirror on her way down to the floor. The eyes, the hair, the smile, the dress, the smell, the walk, the way she talks and carries herself - who does he see, she wonders when Han pours his heart out to her even before he has had his first drink. That too is a novelty around here, but instead of her usual protocol, Qi’ra tucks Han’s cards and hands away and out of sight. He has always had better luck at the table than she, but not, perhaps, here.

In response, Han’s earnest, remorseful look wraps around her like a long, warm scarf – the kind she had dreamt of owning when nursing herself back to health, alone, in that earthly hellhole from which they had both emerged. His look and his words remind her of everything she abhors, and is eternally grateful and glad to have left behind. Moreover, she would kill anyone in a heartbeat if they tried to drag her back in. But what does he know? (Qi’ra owns many beautiful scarves nowadays, each a little more choking and elegant than the last.) Not very much, seeing that he seems to have still been entertaining the thought about returning to Corellia for her.

And even while something almost alien shifts delightedly within her at hearing about his longings and mad schemes of rescue – for Han never comes with an entirely realistic plan, in her opinion, and often not even with the navigational data -, Qi’ra can only hope that reminding him of who stood where first is enough of a tip off as to why this happy coincidence is _not_ as much of an instance of star-crossed lovers’ re-union as he might wish to believe. It does not mean she does not intend to enjoy the moment, just…

_You are late again, Han._

She cannot afford to live in the past; neither does she really want to.

-

Beringed fingers squeeze her face, turning her head from side to side. Then, with a flash of penetrating brightness evading her eyelids, she is wrenched out of the blessed, blank narcosis and dragged back into the light.

‘Hello.’

Another flash of light, and Qi’ra feels her head spin. It still _smells_ like home, and at the moment that is helping even less than usual. Whether it is the after-effect of the sedative, or the wafts of liqueur that hit her nose, she does not know, but she feels herself throwing up on the man’s boots. Water and acid – there is not much else inside of her. Ever.

‘Kriffing… Don’t you just hate when this happens?’ he mutters dully. ‘Those worms can never get the dosage right.’

Someone forces her head back.

‘Makes you wonder how they don’t kill their humans by accident, doesn’t it? Open your eyes, darling. Open your eyes.’

Three drops of a tincture of some sort hits her eyeball in what feels like an agonizingly slow procession of bleaching. They do the same to her ears. Despite the weird application, the drug does seem to work – her eyesight clears up and she feels much steadier all around.

‘Now,’ he begins again, smoothing back her hair, arranging her limbs and posture as one would a doll on a stand. ‘I know a little bit about you already. Trivial things; all formalities. What I want to know, though… A little test of your understanding, see?’

He taps her on the temple.

‘Who is it that will come to me one day, wanting for you?’

An ugly feeling settles at the bottom of Qi’ra’s stomach as she takes him in. Her gaze is instantly drawn by the hefty trinkets that he decorates himself with – their presence out of place among the armour and faded robes. If he is well off enough to afford jewellery, why still do field-work?

‘Family? You have none, of course, but you never know in this business. You would be surprised what all – ah. Well,’ he shakes his head dismissively. Qi’ra is not interested either. ‘Let’s just say that is unlikely. A sweetheart then? Must be, right?’

_Because he likes it,_ she guesses.

‘It doesn’t matter what they mean to you,’ he adds quickly, threading his ringed fingers through matt, black hair. ‘But what I wonder is, will they be poor? Will they be rich? Will they laugh in my face when I let them in on what a shrewd little bitch they are about to saddle themselves with.’

She begins to say something.

He slaps her.

_‘I should tear your tongue out for what you have done. But he wants your tongue intact.’_

It usually does not take Qi’ra a lifetime to figure out what her opponents are looking for, be it a matter of business or pleasure, but that is under conditions where the scales are at least somewhat balanced. When questions are asked for the purpose of bettering one’s hand, when the outcome is still dependent upon negotiations. This does not feel like an instance of either, and Qi’ra knows Lady Proxima had not done her any favours before parting with her.

Frowning, he looks down upon her, fingers kneading the neck of the cloth-wrapped flask that has been waiting by his boot.

She should still try to say something in her defense. ‘Sir, I am sure you will find that I am very –‘

However, the same liqueur she had smelled earlier hits her face, forcing her head down as she clenches her eyes against the sting. Not the right words then.

‘Disobedient, little liar,’ he breathes in her face, at once close enough for Qi’ra to see the silver of his rings is badly kept. A few fatter ones are not even real. ‘You’re not catalogue material, darling.’

_‘You will not speak again. Not to apologize, not to sweet-talk me, not to get out of this.’_

‘Luckily, I know better than to put all my eggs in one basket,’ he lays one broad hand on her cheek, smearing the sugary liquid down the side of her neck and collarbones. ‘I want to make people happy. And I want _you_ to make me happy by keeping my clients in the dark, but content. Yes, Qi’ra? We must work on that, you and I.’

She is ushered through damp corridors, where Sarkin Enneb’s purchases are getting evaluated and tagged with microchips, toward a busy-busy future. It will all boil down to the price from now on.

-

Qi’ra imagines leaning on Han’s shoulder for half an hour of shut eye as they huddle together for warmth in the cargo bay. Already he has found a few shoddily secured containers but, so far, nothing useful in them. It doesn’t matter though, they will try sneaking up as soon as the deckhands come downstairs to prepare for offloading at their next stop and she’ll make sure to locate the kitchens first. It’s an in-sector flight, a regular one. Getting a hold of a few ID chips of leaving passengers and short-circuiting them should not be an issue either. And then it’s all easy going until Nubia; the hardest part is behind them.

That would be a place where they could rest and think, what next? Finding work should not be a problem. Han is sure to try and talk himself into the good graces of the depot managers at Tallera Downs, and if not, there is bound to be a second hand market for fixed up, older products of Nubia Star Drives out there. And, if things did get messy in the beginning, they could disappear into the countryside. Farm work is still better than anything they have been doing so far.

She’s sure they’ll work it out.

-

To all noteworthy parties who visit Corellia, Sarkin is a middle-man, an owner of an unassuming boutique, where he draws up solutions to any of their off-the-top-of-the-head desires. They come to him because despite appearances he is discrete, and a stickler for presentation. A rare quality at the heart of the industry.

He also hates wholesale, though it is getting more and more lucrative by the month as the Empire’s demand for star ship parts, and cheap labour, increases. As Qi’ra understands it though, Sarkin simply has no mind for juggling the operational costs that arise from maintaining ‘a dormant stock’, nor for the pretence of legality that accompanies selling to an industry that is of national importance. She believes she could help with that, but, well… So, instead, he focuses on the minute, the personal – on something where salesmanship and his influence upon his merchandise can really be felt.

Then again, Qi’ra wouldn’t know all the details. She is strip mall material these days.

Pocketing the silver pendant and a few extra credits, she lets her hand linger on the guest’s unassuming, dazed face. She can only hope her luck holds and the ones she manages to slip the pills to will not kick up a fuss with Verka at some indeterminate, unpredictable point in the future.

Every little bit helps – be it credit, kindness, or trust.

But truthfully, it is the hardest on her when they are trying to be kind. Like this one, they hesitate, try to talk to her, and calm her – or, perhaps, to calm themselves? Sometimes, they try to talk her out of it altogether. As if she had a choice. As if their drug-induced bouts of sympathy did not yield before the fact that they keep coming to this place anyway.

Sarkin does like to keep reminding his girls how important “the personal touch is”, which, in other words, means something akin to becoming a part-time minder, though he does not understand it this way. Well, induced narcolepsy for the exploration of subconscious desires in the unconscious, or something to that effect, qualifies as therapy in Qi’ra’s books. The pay and the work-life balance are also immeasurably better.

Retreating – back to the lobby, back in front of more strangers – with another pilfered pendant hidden between the folds of her dress, she wonders how Sarkin finds these people. Faces she never remembers. Perhaps the slaver believes himself magnanimous by recommending her to the ones that look at girls as if they wanted to adopt them, but Qi’ra prefers her monsters to have straightforward, believable desires that she can at least bargain her way around.

_Breathe. Keep breathing._

There is no way out. There is no way up. At this rate, one day, one of them will pay enough to buy her silence and hurt her as much as they please. As she adds her bounty among the rest, Qi’ra decides not to stick around to let that happen.

-

He had joined the Imperial Navy. For her.

Qi’ra figures that if there are indeed nine hells, as is common knowledge on Corellia, hers and Han’s are bound to be of remarkably different sort.

What was his plan, she wonders, as she sips her wine and watches him go toe to toe with her favourite smuggler. To save up enough to buy his own ship? Which, considering the imperial wages, would have taken a while - and seems to _still_ be his endgame in this hot, hot water he has dropped himself into. Or would he have commandeered a fighter jet while in the Corellian system and just rushed off to get her? What would he have done once he realised the futility of his effort? Would he have let it go then? Moved on? She had made sure no records survived. Or would fate, or Force, or the Maker, or whatever _something_ that was out there still have brought Han to her new doorstep?

Was that hand of fate dealing its cards in her or Han’s favour this way?

She smiles. Though he may make for a handsome toy soldier, Qi’ra knows for a fact that Han’s talents lie elsewhere. He is his own lucky charm; even Lando can see that. _There are no liars in this game. Only players._ But as it happens, Han graduates as an in-debt smuggler for Crimson Dawn in flying colours even before he has officially become one. By losing Qi’ra’s boss ten grand and a half for his sabacc buy-in. It is a drop in the ocean for them, but amusing nonetheless. If Han had actually won, the laws of her universe would have had to be re-written – good guys rarely finished first.

The frost in the air has a sobering effect on her. It is outside the local gamblers’ den that she finds Beckett, standing some way off by the steps, smoking. She hopes he is not contemplating jumping; that would leave it on her alone to take care of the kids.

‘I thought you would have quit by now.’

He acknowledges her with a side eye, but his mind seems to remain adrift between Vandor’s snowy peaks. Will she ever long like this for anyone? Of course, grieving does not mean that Beckett will be letting his guard down, but she would be doing herself a major disservice if she did not at least try.

‘I heard about what happened,’ she had not known his crew, not really, but she had met them once or twice, and had certainly run into less appealing types on Crimson Dawn’s and the White Worms’ payroll. Shame that it had to be this way around; that they always lost the half-decent ones first. ‘We will get them eventually.’

‘Offering to off Enfys for me? What’s your price these days?’

Higher than it used to be, she would like to think. She did not, generally, do small-time hits anymore; unless it was to make a point. She is not making him an offer, however, just extending her solidarity. Death was still death, and these particular ones could not have brought on more unpleasant consequences for her.

‘I am sorry,’ she continues softly. ‘Truly.’

Beckett landed on his feet more often than not, while those he surrounded himself with, be they allies or enemies, did not – that made him dangerous. It also made him a reliable asset to bet on in times like these. However, it was with a steady infrequency that one could behold Tobias Beckett on board the First Light these days, and Qi’ra senses that the Kessel run he is about to do will be one of the last, if not the last job, Beckett will do for them – successful, or not. When they had first met, he had been flush. She reckons that is how she had gotten the impression that he and Dryden were good friends. But Beckett’s pockets always emptied up quicker than the Senate of statesmen at the formation of the Empire, and Dryden Vos had no friends to drag him down.

_‘We would find ourselves much poorer if it weren’t for men like Beckett.’_ Many people found themselves poorer with Beckett – it went both ways.

‘Yeah, so am I,’ he sighs, but the knowing mask is sliding back up as he speaks.

It is the rarer the more experienced and jaded they are to pick up on fleeting signs of vulnerability in their souls. Not to say that Qi’ra must never forget that the faster she advances and the more she learns, the less they are willing to share with her. There are no friends in this business for a good reason; not for anyone. More often than not, knowing too much about the inner lives of thieves and murderers did not help – quite the opposite. Shame then that there was no other option.

‘It was a hell of a ride,’ his voice echoes with enviable affection and regret that is meant to touch you, take you by surprise, when coming from someone like him. She has used that voice herself often enough; it was a neat emotion to tap into when called for. ‘How are you these days, Qi’ra? Dryden seems a little… agitated. He treatin’ you right?’

Turn their own blade on them - classic. Fair enough. Qi’ra elects to ignore his sneering familiarity with her life, however, and opts to go straight to talking shop instead. She cannot recall the last time she had willingly chosen to do otherwise.

‘Are you honestly surprised? That shipment would have solved our liquidity demands easily until the refinement regulations are re-assessed.’

‘Dosh! He would have found some other way ‘round.’

Qi’ra would have; the heist had been her idea. ‘Maybe, but why would he have to?’

‘He still might need to,’ Beckett kicks the butt of his cigarette into the abyss. ‘If that ship is but a sparkly extension of this Lan-do’s ego. Or if flyboy here pulls something again…’ he laughs, eyeing her knowingly all of a sudden. ‘I swear, I will end him myself should he drop this one.’

She holds steady. That is actually more than she could have hoped for. Does Beckett mean it as a kindness toward Han? Or as justice, perhaps? Or does the recently bereaved thief see it as some kind of noble gesture - toward Qi’ra herself maybe? He most likely already knows why she has been sent with them, doesn’t he? But since, she figures, Beckett hardly _cares_ for the quality of their killer’s sleep at night, does he suspect Qi’ra just could not do it if she had to?

_Could she do it?_

Of course, it is possible he is joking, and will take Han for a foster child after all. Anything is possible, just not always probable. ‘I thought men like you thrived on uncertainty?’

‘We will deliver the goods this time. Simple as that.’ The smuggler rubs his hands over his face until some semblance of his regular world-weary confidence makes its reappearance. _‘_ Good thing I am not the only one here who knows how to work these things, eh? It is nice to have you, Qi’ra.’

He has been in this game longer than she has; yet Qi’ra is, arguably, better off than he is. Arguably. Maybe. In the end, all that separates them is the speed of their draw and the favour of their mutual benefactor neé proprietor. It is not her skin on the line, unless something goes south. Unless any of them decides to make a run for it. But Beckett leaves the ledge for now; there is always time for that later.

‘Well, it is a first for me in a way,’ she says in a chuckle, glad to at least pretend they are allies. What he tells her next though, hits her in all the wrong spots at once.

‘I am sorry too, you know?’ and just how incredibly well does sympathy become him. ‘For you, kids.’

_It will never come to that,_ she tells herself. She knows what she is doing. She has known all along, except Han was never meant to have a part in any of this. Having won his freedom, he could be anywhere, do anything with anyone – and yet, he was here, with Qi’ra. For Qi’ra. If there was anyone in their desperate little crew who was wholly and without second thoughts _for_ Qi’ra, it was Han. How then could that not make her fond?

‘Young wild things, eh?’ Beckett shakes his head at her. ‘Never really thinking about what they’re getting themselves mixed up in.’

There had been nothing to think about. Good people had not exactly been available. Before leaving him and his overly familiar observations where they stand, Qi’ra, the _kid_ , returns his sympathy with a tight, hopefully grateful-enough of a smile. Having long ago given up on the idea of anyone being able to rescue anyone else, Qi’ra neither wants nor needs sympathy, but it is better for people to think that she does.

‘It is what it is.’

-

‘How long is the human intestine?’

At this point in time, Qi’ra does not know him by his name yet, but the tape stuck over the mouth of the young accountant who is dangling upside down from the air vent at Sarkin’s boutique tells her she should do well not to pry. In fact, it looks like it probably would have been better if she had not woken up at all.

‘There are some things about the human nature that one simply cannot help but have a burning desire to know, am I right?’ he smiles amicably, an instrument flashing in his right hand, sleeves of silk rolled up. They have been having dinner, she figures distantly, as she spies on the scene from Sarkin’s office in her spice-fuelled daze when the tall man starts unbuttoning the redhead’s shirt.

More than a year later, Qi’ra is standing in a clean, backlit shower, and scrubs her arms under scorching water until it manages to draw fresh blood of her own. She has never felt more sated, yet unclean at the same time. Even if something tells her that it will not stay this way for very long. The boundaries of her reality can never be built of anything more solid than dreams, lest they turn out to be real when she inevitably crashes against them. Numbly rubbing her fingers against the tiles, Qi’ra takes the punishment by the water – if only to replace the crawling feeling underneath her skin with something different. It is the tactile sensations that are most loath to leave her alone.

She has learned that her dear slaver, whom she has just strangled with a fine metal chain, had not so much made a beautiful profit on her as rather ‘thrown her into the mix’ as practically a gift to Crimson Dawn. Her worth, it turns out, is only as great as Sarkin Enneb’s flight of pettiness. Somehow, it manages to make her feel worse about herself. And Qi’ra hates that.

‘Out of spite,’ her new master speculates, pointing out to Margo the transactions from Czerka Arms’ Core World’s central management, ‘he handed me what he must have thought a poisoned chalice _no one_ could possibly ever put into good use. And just look at him now.’

For a moment, she entertains the notion that Dryden might be talking about herself. But no, this is about protecting Czerka against the Rebel privateers; it was being kept hush-hush by both the arms manufacturer and the Empire, since the latter had recently failed spectacularly in providing the security Czerka expected. And as with most new relationships, there was a healthy amount of mutual distrust to be surmounted between Crimson Dawn and Czerka before they could proceed in one, joyous matrimony. Qi’ra knows, because organisations are, ultimately, just like people; not to say they are usually run by them. Qi’ra knows, because she is being expected to know; learn, and learn fast – or be gone. There is nowhere to _go_ but through the airlock, though.

' _What were you looking for when you were trying to get off Corellia?'_

It is better than stagnating. Because what really is one’s dignity and peace of mind worth against keeping a steady heartbeat in their breast, Qi’ra thinks, as she walks toward them, an ornate piece of glasswork clenched in her heat-flushed hands.

‘Oversee that last thing to Ghrikk as well, will you my dear? Personally, if you must,’ Dryden pats his advisor’s hand meaningfully. ‘The Colonel has not refused you in the past.’

Before, yet without sparing a single glance her way, he smiles to himself: ‘Look, Margo. Qi’ra is back.’ Slyly, as if he had been expecting her. As if Qi’ra, too, surely had known all along that she would not try to run away from them again.

Ah, Margo – the widely perceived island of sanity and calm in the middle of the floating, vibrant rollercoaster of Dryden Vos’ mercurial whims. In an arcade that never stopped spinning, where new faces changed out the old hands, young bodies replaced those who’d been drained of their high spirits and those who had let their chips fall too fast - at its epicentre, Margo had stuck around. The climate and the atmosphere suited her, apparently. With unassailable calm and orderliness, the Imroosian had laid out the details of the kind of treatment the guests aboard the First Light had come to expect from their host’s staff. What was tolerated – openness to experience and obsequiousness, for instance – and what was not – insolence and neurosis. Especially neurosis; you had to relax a little to be able to appreciate new experiences.

And with the same serene devotion as to the smooth flow of the star yacht’s daily routines, Margo had overseen the beatings, when it appeared that the small Corellian had her own idea about all four of her simple house rules. True, every now and again she had had to make sure the physicians did not get over-eager with fixing her up afterwards; original article was, after all, an original article. And, after Qi’ra had started getting a hang of things, and taken a few drinks from the decraniated servants herself, she had realised she ought to at least be grateful to Margo for that much. Truly, it was not until after Qi’ra had managed to kill her guard during her latest – and last – escape attempt that their relations with Dryden’s concierge really had soured. And Dryden himself had suddenly decided that Qi’ra from Corellia was very interesting indeed.

There was always another level of ‘intensity’ to existence, waiting just around the corner.

‘That day at the airlock – you said you had paid a fair price for me,’ Qi’ra starts. Her tongue has loosened up now that she is drinking her third glass of the small-batch Tevraki whiskey that her benefactor had ordered left on her nightstand; as a present, or as a medicine. It is thoughtful of Dryden in the manner equipping a person going into free fall with a helmet is considerate.

‘And how very cheeky she is feeling. So droll,’ Dryden kisses Margo on the cheek as they are wrapping it up for the night. ‘I love it!’

The tall woman is giving her a pitying look that leaves no doubt as to how hopeless she considers her to be at that moment. She wonders how much Margo knows, and whether she should retaliate by flaunting, ignoring, or subduing what she knows about Qi'ra. For Qi’ra is having suspicions regarding what, in fact, _is_ more beneficial to her now that they-… When Margo halts by her side and straightens the sandy satin scarf around her neck, she recoils; too tense still from earlier to hide her reaction in time. A mistake. She _must_ learn to hide these things under her tongue if she wants to keep going. Toward what though, Qi’ra does not know.

_‘Just hold onto me, and don’t look back.’_ A voice had said, as if in a dream.

Dryden is looking at her good-humouredly, relaxing on the opposite end of the couch, and spreads his arms in welcome once they are left alone, inviting her over. She has been in his den of riches before, but this time the door has merely been left open and she has wandered over without any prior summons to help justify herself to her. Whether she admits it or not, Qi’ra could forget herself in here, and if he threw away the key, perhaps she would not even notice. Nevertheless, she does not budge at his invitation. Any home of hers has ever been but another cage. But that is another mistake, she realises, too late. She is making many now, whereas she had been making close to none just a while ago with a blade in her hand. Perhaps _this_ is why she is here: to witness that despite the lethality of her actions, at the end of the day, she is not it, and that this is not what she wants. That she is not like him.

_Even if it could cost you everything?_

She genuinely wonders about the need that has led her to seek him out tonight too. You would think she has had enough for one day. Yet, the soft, ivory walls of the little nook that is to be her own from now on had felt too clean, too absent of impurities. Too silent. It is within these white silences that she is afraid of catching up with the Qi’ra that is running, adapting, shifting between faces that command the hands of more women than should ever fit inside one motherless girl. She would be one face too many for Qi’ra to handle, she thinks, and flees the silence that jars against the memory of the wet tissue resisting her grip inside the gash sown across Sarkin’s throat. So simple in its messiness, whereas little else makes sense once you step away from it. How does one go from that to enjoying things in life? It had seemed only sensible then to carry on in the company of someone who already possessed answers to that question.

And they do say never to drink alone, don’t they?

‘I have paid, oh, frankly ridiculous amounts for exquisite things – please, have a look around,’ he gestures toward the exhibits around him, stopping before her. Too close to get away from, too far to make it seem necessary. ‘Some disappoint you so fast, sadly. Others – others you don’t even realise you want before you have them in your life.’

_Here is a face that is not easy to forget_ , Qi’ra thinks. The Maker, when crafting him, must have poured so much love into its project at the structural stages that it must have run out, or forgotten, by the time it was supposed to give its creation a human soul. And so, it gave him the voracious curiosity of a collector instead.

‘Beauty is strange like this,’ he says, biting his lip, oddly endearing to look at for once. ‘You never know until something makes a thing ‘just right’.’ With that he lifts the whiskey in her hand to his lips, letting her tilt the glass as he studies her.

She muses on whether the many beautiful things he owns have had any lasting effect on him. Had he ever looked at them in the way she does – with longing, born out of utter, total deprivation –, or if it has always been purely a matter of cataloguing what has the potential to chase off tedium and bring excitement. She wonders if letting her out to play like he just has makes her more or less valuable to him. The thought of not knowing how to price herself continues to bother her a great deal tonight. And Dryden’s offer to let her track down Enneb, which had been conciliatory in his own way she would like to believe, has done nothing but unsettle her further. Because behind the understanding with which he now regards her, Qi’ra catches the beginnings of the same frightfully earnest look with which she had first seen him measuring up the ginger on Corellia. Like her actual performance could never be measured in practical, straightforward successes and failures. It is the way he looks at her before she is about to fight him, and after the last time, she can no longer unsee or unthink the impression it instils in her.

She has never seen inside herself, but he will.

Qi’ra suspects that what stares at her through those expressive, pale eyes in these deceptively calm moments of outward appreciation is only an unnervingly good imitation.

_More human than human._

Her grip on the glass tightens unconsciously. He can probably feel it too. Dryden’s voice is low, serpentine when he speaks next. ‘You deserve it, my dear. Congratulations.’

‘I had to,’ she mutters as her head spins. _Wanted to,_ a cold voice corrects her instantly. But he just grins impatiently, his lively eyes flitting all over her again as he presses on.

‘I did wonder if you would shoot him point blank or choose more intimate means. It changes the nature of the entire thing, you know?’ she does not; but Qi’ra figures she soon will. ‘You must feel exhausted. Tell me – did it feel good at least?’

And secretly, quietly, Qi’ra must admit that it did. _Very much so._ She nods, even when habitually rubbing her hands off into her shirt, and wonders, what exactly does that make her now?

‘I recall that when you first came to me-,’ he leans over her, encouraging her to drink as his thumb brushes against her cheek, and she could almost let it go that she had _never_ come to him willingly, ‘-this was what you had wanted. Liberation.’

Since that day at the escape pod, Qi’ra has been trying really hard to get used to the speed at which Dryden shifts between convivial and fatal registers. What might come off as an acceptable, even predictable, eccentricity to those who do not have to deal with him too closely or often is truly so, so much more; as any long-time member of the First Light can attest to. On better days, when there is business to be done, her foresight is ultimately to the benefit of both of them, though in reality, it is a survival skill that she cannot get a hang of fast enough.

As a testament to how fast a learner she is then, Qi’ra barely flinches, when the Passenger lurking within him – the parasite, the heritage of his mysterious origins, that, Qi’ra thinks, fuels and feeds off of his pent-up anger and passion – resurfaces, and he hurls the priceless crystal glass she has been holding across the room, where the beautiful, valuable item, rendered worthless in his hands in the span of a heartbeat, shatters into innumerable blinking pieces in the inky void that they walk upon around here.

She only vaguely notices it as the cue it serves as to the lonely enforcers who are still standing guard at the door to his office, her gaze held hostage by the dark crimson that washes up around the chastisement he reserves for his new, favourite toy whenever she fails to keep up. Never without cause – just until she accepts her place as part of the machine. But despite such a good first reaction, Qi’ra still takes a step back, instinctively as far away from him as possible – and it is never far enough -, as the charming, debonair façade that Dryden Vos has built around himself and around Crimson Dawn crumbles away.

She retreats, and can instantly feel the shattered glass of his small congratulatory gift to her crunch underneath her shoes. And she understands: the intent, the trap, the price. Qi’ra has done so well for herself today, finding, entrapping, and killing the nightmarish middle manager, but she will _always_ walk barefoot around him. If she does not keep close enough, sooner or later, she will cut herself.

Later, when she rests her head on pillows too soft for true comfort, she will think back on how she had let him get to her. Later, when it is no longer blood she is trying to wash off her hands, but his touch on where he puts another brand on the back of her neck. Because it is not due to the frozen silence inside her soul that vengeance has left in its wake, nor because of the burst of delight in her heart over how _in control_ she had felt when standing over her former tormentor’s body. No. It is only when Dryden reaches for her and pulls her off the shards she has stumbled upon that Qi’ra fractures a little; when she realises that the obvious, terrifying cracks within his code are trying to make her feel welcome in her loneliness.

And he is hushing her, like a small girl, and telling her how well she has done, how _lucky_ she really is to have found him. How no one can hurt her anymore. She can tell he is smiling into her hair, as he sways along with her to his own pleasure, while she is fending off the faintness that is weaving its way around her already leaden feet, the sickness that coils in the bottom of her stomach. Until she finally stops struggling with him. And Qi’ra almost – _almost_ – believes that Dryden is making a lot of sense, actually. Where else would it be safer around here?

And when he sits her down and she hears herself thanking him, sobbing against his shoulder as the stress overwhelms her, telling him how kind, how good he is being with her – and when those curious, rose-tinted eyes laugh in her face, with long, familiar fingers creeping softly under the scarf that she hides herself behind, Qi’ra thinks for the first time that she might honestly be going just a little bit insane.

 _He came for me on Corellia_ she finally decides before she leans into him, ignoring the Dark Passenger that is following her every move through the man’s pale, bloodshot eyes, and kisses him. Tentatively. As he does not know how to, but, as she must believe, he might yet want to. As he wants _her_ to, judging by reaction. While at it, she clenches his hands in hers, removing them from nearby her neck. He does not object, and the relief she feels is imminent. Crippling in its implication. The taste of him does not differ from the bitterness on her own tongue tonight. She chooses to focus on that instead. There is comfort in it; in knowing there is something akin to you in the universe. Knowing that you are not entirely alone.

It terrifies her

But she will take it. She can make use of it.

_I can._

Truthfully, Qi’ra does not know what it is exactly that she is betting on – the rules keep on changing -, but she is aware deep down in her gut that it is either follow through with her gamble or face sudden death this time around. These seem to be his favourite rules, in one iteration or another, and being good at her job alone has never cut it for her so far. She was magnificent at her ‘job’ on Corellia, and look where that got her. And because there is nothing, she thinks, a man like him really _needs_ that he has not already had or cannot get for a price – money bores him blind. Which is just as well, since Qi’ra has not a single credit to her name. Just her mind, body, and soul, which Dryden seems increasingly interested in owning.

_And some golden dice._

But who here has any real interest in those?

When his hand curls around her throat, holding her fatigued body steady against the wall of the hall where he trains her in the ancient martial art of Teräs Käsi, she closes her eyes behind the blindfold for good measure. It is but one of the simpler ways in which he deprives her of her senses during their sessions, but this time Qi'ra makes use of it in a novel way - taking herself away, imagining herself back on Corellia, in the abandoned warehouse of Vaufthau Shipyards. She will never go back there; only when here, where she agrees to be tied down so that she can learn to tap into the invisible to survive. And thus, behind closed eyes, the fingers that hug her face, the thumb that presses down sharply on her jugular and sends her shivering every time he squeezes – they belong to a young man, one she clings to out of love or… what could have been.

The smell of acetone and old paint in this crumbling building must be causing the dizziness that is invading her head. Slowly, it will drive out the oxygen, but that will never happen, she knows – because she has him. And she knows that he would never let any harm come to her. They can always stop. Even if his grip is greedier than she remembers and the tightness below her navel harder to ignore. There never has been too much room within her for what she wants to be in the first place; he is no different than her in this respect. They were just not built this way, and yet… They have been given thousands of opportunities, hundreds of paths they could take. And what they really need - the Maker knows. She has been blessed that people can be so beautiful and good. She can feel the dirt from the sewers that another acid rain has kicked up run against her fingers as she digs her nails into his back, adjusting. He feels taller and more distinct like this. In front of her. Moving steadily against her. Asking if… ah, she squeezes her eyes shut tighter in the instant he brings her down fully, guessing, perhaps, at the pleasure she receives from hide and seek, and she opens her mouth to gasp his name –

But Qi’ra never does, or is never allowed to. Whatever pleading sound escapes her vaporises on her lips in the sonically dampened room as soon as it leaves her constricting throat.

 _I have no voice_ , she thinks.

Unlike the man who is cradling her; the one who has paid for her silence with what he offers her.

_But I need to scream._

The name of the man she loves dies in her throat, choked out by the one who now owns her.

Numbly, she thinks of the holocams around them, of the name she has mouthed into silence, and feels cold. And as her heartbeat grows stronger, increasingly violent inside the single violent creature that she is merging into with him, the skin of her neck tears against the clawed thumb that has been keeping check on her pulse and she feels him slow down briefly to draw the taste of her into his mouth. It scares her just how good part of her feels, relinquishing all control, stepping away from herself – but she does not know if she should be grateful for this blessing, or should he. That is, before the oxygen starvation hits and she is truly left with nothing, making the darkness behind the blindfold grow momentarily darker still. Before she starts to panic. Before she tries, blind and deaf and hyperaware of the crushing pressure in her lungs and around her heart, to deliver a rabbit punch on him, and when that fails, to claw out Dryden’s eyes behind his own blindfold.

_‘You wouldn’t last the length of a breath.’_

In trying to escape from him she ends up clinging to him harder than before, his movements growing more detached from who or what is fighting against his desires. He will kill her, she realises. Until the grip on her throat loosens without warning, his fingers finding her below while she comes apart in sobbing relief anyway.

‘ _My_ Qi’ra.’

_That people can be so beautiful and good._

Dryden’s voice is deep and soothing next to her head when she opens her eyes again, the dying light of Chandrila’s sun falling on the wreckage around them. Her blindfold has come off and with that the blackness of the possibilities that had enveloped her. There is blood under her nails, air in her lungs. He is stroking her head with his free hand, up and down, up, then down, and it feels better than she thinks it ever should. It is better not to think ‘why’. It is better not to think. She could not think straight even if she wanted to; she is not here. Yet even so, it is the newly regained _sound_ of her own fractured breath that shakes her to her very core in those fleeting moments and breaks what happened in for her. And it is indeed the smallest of mercies that she does not have to look at the man with her at that very same minute.

‘You are coming along nicely,’ he says softly in her ear as she clings to him, still around him, still a million miles away behind her eyes as she trembles.

He is telling her that he is thinking of sending her after an ‘old friend’ of hers as a reward for how well she is doing. To kill off old haunts.

A memory assaults her – of a young, skinny Corellian’s incoherent pleading against the mesh tape over his mouth as he is being propositioned in a friendly manner, one last time, at one unassuming Coronet cathouse by a fair, tall man with a dining knife in his hand.

‘What do you say we find out how they made you – together?’ he smiles.

-

It creeps up on you – that sense, you know? That premonition – an air thin feeling that all is not quite right with you. It sits with you when you interrogate the silence, still alone after selling yourself, and it judges your worth and it, too, finds you lacking.

-

‘Nothing is going to change the way I am looking at you right now.’

An accessory closet _is_ a notch up from an eel vat, she must admit.

_How very-very dumb of you!_

It may be, she thinks offhandedly as she draws him in, yet everything about this feels nothing short of wonderful. He is from before her time, and while they are hanging in hyperspace, all this – it may as well happen outside of time. It doesn’t count. (It counts for everything.) And Qi’ra, who has had to steal together and cheat herself into every little bit of happiness she could fathom, is not about to refuse something free, happy, and honest.

For the moment, Qi’ra leans into it, savouring the possibility. She always knew she could become something different with Han; someone better. Lighter. Some of that optimism and sheer _hope_ Han stubbornly carries in his breast slips inside her as well. She remembers the Silo. She should have died in the Silo, and yet… He grasps at her with the same urgency that had burned inside both of their hearts that day at Coronet’s spaceport, and that _could_ be enough, she thinks, couldn’t it? To start believing, at the eleventh hour, that things were meant to go the way they went for a reason. That this is the opportunity she has been waiting for.

When Beckett does them both a favour and interrupts, Qi’ra can barely keep her face straight. Here be she, the wily woman, throwing herself into the arms of an old flame, pulling on Han’s heartstrings and thus, seducing Beckett’s lifeline. The smuggler sends her a deadly look, but... is she giggling? Well then, it does look like she has lost her usual register somewhere inside Lando’s wonderful world of capes, doesn’t it? But what is she to do if these men simply do not understand how it is Han, and not Qi’ra, who is the seductress here. And somehow, the possibility of turning back time and upturning the table just sounds hysterically funny.

She should know better by now.

Her smile fades little by little as she hugs herself in the mirror, rubbing her arms where Han had held her. The sudden ghostly feel of a gun against her palm conjures up a familiar image that the mirror’s upside-down magic distorts; the woman holding the pistol stands at its barrel’s end this time.

Agitated voices reach her from somewhere further down with the smuggler, doubtless, trying to dissuade Han in a few, ever so carefully chosen words from making one of the biggest mistakes of his life. He should take Beckett's word for it; her position does not allow for any further mistakes from her. But Qi’ra knows that Han will be making that mistake anyway. He had made it a long time ago, after all. They both had. Whether it will be a repeat from her though, she suddenly, unexpectedly, does not know.

_‘I am glad you got out.’_

She imagines her reflection shattering.

Where exactly is the choice here?

Qi'ra shoves the cape back into its place with an unpleasant weightlessness churning her stomach.

-

It is dawning on Tanaab.

For hours, Qi’ra has been smoking cigarette after cigarette, lining the charred stubs up along the balustrade. Whatever it is supposed to do for her, it is not doing it. She suspects she is doing it wrong.

When she switches on her comm at long last and waits for the notifications to come through, it occurs to her in another mouthful of smoke that he is very much like tar – sticky, overwhelming, impossible to get rid or out of. She _had_ intended to return immediately; now though, there will be questions.

Gradually, the lucent red of Tanaab’s sun devours the flowing grasslands that stretch toward the horizon.

She had honestly thought it would be the kind thing to do. It is _the_ _single_ _thought_ that has kept hammering inside her head for the duration of these two, absent hours before dawn. Not a good thing, not a thing that rights wrongs. A kinder thing. For a thousandth time, her eyes drift back onto the ‘sleeping’ form of the girl indoors. What beautiful music she had played; talented beyond her age. Elisa - a governess’ daughter.

Perhaps she had overreacted. Perhaps he had just been in a particularly cruel mood. But this… child – she could not possibly have had it in her to survive like Qi'ra. And she had rather the girl didn’t have to suffer until she realised that. Wasn’t that an improvement already? That she could weigh these things against each other and make a decision.

Except plans had changed.

The girl should be meeting with her mother again right now.

_Why_ had she intervened?

_‘You can be so very ungrateful at times,’ he carefully wipes the juice off her chin, taking a bite himself, then holding up the fruit in front of her face again. ‘You want to help her, I know that. And you_ can _, Qi’ra. Make it easier for her than it was for you. Her mother doesn’t seem to care enough to.’_

Qi’ra turns back toward the horizon, closing her eyes, her mascara-stained fingers clutching the blaster in her hand. _Mother. What kind of mother…_ She puts the last one out, blows the lined up stubs off the balcony, and stands on feet she can no longer feel.

Three shots; to diffuse the suspicion of poisoning. The detection rate of the poison is infinitesimal, anyway; a quick, clean, quiet death. And at least the light is good; she must remember to take photos before she leaves. She botched the blackmail, so she must handle the clean-up. An example, instead of a happy reunion.

Must they all always realise what really matters to them so _late?_

-

As it turns out, it is the droid alone that seems to have the general idea of how things are with Qi’ra. Bemusing as it – _she_ , right? – is, L3, who would as soon twist a meat man’s neck as serve them, knows like when she sees it. Lando's co-pilot's insistence on hearing her part of the story impresses as much as irritates her; is she really that obvious? Funnily enough, it seems that minus a few social graces, L3 is just as convinced as Qi'ra that she needs to know as much as possible about the people she is working with in order to maintain her tactical advantage over them. What that would be in regard to Qi’ra herself, the woman honestly cannot fathom. But it stings too, because Qi’ra does not like to think of herself as of, well, a machine – be as she may part of one. She is much more than that. And she does not intend for things to stay like they are forever. No. Qi’ra is a weapon, not a tool. Although, -

Their conversation is making her uncomfortable.

And there is nothing truly new in it for her: she knows that she is the least likely to sabotage this mission; that she will not back down, will not run; that she will always keep going back to Dryden, unless one of them kicks the bucket, which, in their line of work, is always a riveting possibility. That, at the end of the day, Qi'ra simply has too much going on to just up and leave.

What is her restraining bolt?

Frankly, she is not sure she wants to answer that question. Even if did all come down to that, what difference would it make? Freedom is a nice thought, but where would she go? Back, under the pollution line? And why? Who would she be? Alone and nameless and powerless – a sitting duck. What satisfaction would... - wandering the galaxy, scraping for alms? She cannot just leave! And that…

It hurts.

_Still, Qi’ra?_

Surprisingly, it is Han himself who really drives the knife in at the end. He does not mean to, of course – people never mean to; there is just a limitless number of things that can force their hand against you.

_‘And you’re the only one who can calm him down?’_

He has no business, _no right_ to demand or _expect_ anything of her. Who she can talk to or be with, for instance. She is still alive, is she not? Out of her own efforts. _Because_ of herself alone. Because she is stronger than the girl Han thinks he sees. Does he ever stop to think of that? More than that, she practically runs a significant portion of one of the nastiest plagues in the galaxy. And she is helping him out of yet another mess she quite honestly could have done without. The least he could do is stop asking stupid fucking questions.

Or does he really not see what she is like? What she is willing to do? What Qi’ra would do to anyone, even to Han himself, if they forced her hand! Perhaps that droid is indeed a well of worldly wisdom and Han is being soft in the head because of his stupid heart. And what in a galaxy is Qi’ra to do with Han’s heart?

(That it might be genuine concern that drive Han’s inquiries does not occur to her until after some time. So used to is she to the imitation game.)

It does not matter.

Out of the two of them, she had stayed behind for him. It had been Qi’ra who had gone back for Han, and not the other way around; to shield him from Proxima and Moloch. Because Han had not thought things through. Because she had been thinking about Han’s heart at the time. About her own too.

And here they stand.

_‘Did you expect me to wait for you forever, Han?’_

If she had only been a little bit less naïve, a little less infatuated with an idea, and simply grabbed the coaxium and run. As had been her first instinct. Qi’ra has excellent instincts. Unless that is, she really-really wants something to be true. How can she not wring her hands over the petulance and hurt on his face then? It is she who should be hurt. He _needs her,_ not the other way around. Come to think of it, she should not even be here in the first place.

_‘I am not a droid you left behind, turned off, with nothing happening to it until you came back to turn me back on.'  
_

She would be somewhere else. Someone else. On some adventure.

Without Han.

Though, that is not at all how she had pictured it.

They are interrupted by the ominous shaking of the Falcon as it comes, almost like a tainted blessing, out of the maelstrom. She cannot be around him like this anymore; it is making her delirious with fairy tales. Fairy tales that will only succeed in getting Han killed – and her too, if she does not stop daydreaming. He may kiss well but he truly knows nothing at all. Because, what, after all, has been the point of this?

They have a job to do. A sith’s gauntlet of a job. Does Han honestly expect Qi’ra to tell him to drop it all and whisk her away after the Kessel run? _If_ they survive, that is. Is it before or after that she should fill him in on Dryden’s many, _fascinating_ hobbies, and on Crimson Dawn’s virtually ever-refilling resource pool that can sustain his obsessions? What would be the point? She would be throwing away years of work for a chance to kill herself as she, quite frankly, could have done in the beginning.

And she isn’t good for him anyway; Beckett is right. Han would not recognise the truly awesome stamina of evil even when it breathed against his very lips. He is too genuine, too _good_ altogether for Qi’ra. It doesn't work.

_‘It works. Trust me, it works.’_

Whoever gives into the other loses themselves completely.

_That has always been true, hasn’t it?_ she thinks with a sad smile as she paints her lips and prepares for their little masquerade on Kessel. _Hasn't it?_

Above all, Qi’ra wants for them both to live, even if that will mean they cannot get some of the things they want. Trading a life for a smile is a bad deal. Besides, she has become very good at smiling anyway. Despite everything.

-

‘A small town boy in a big arcade.’

Sometimes, she thinks she knows him fairly well. It is not like he has ever made a secret of his nature before her. Perhaps only in the very beginning. And they have come a long way since then. Still, her breath, so far steady and soft on top his damp skin, hitches in her throat at the words.

‘Seeing how eager he is, perhaps I should keep him.’

And just so, Qi’ra’s heart freezes where it should not.

This is _hers_. This thought – a living reminder of the possibility of other lives beside the one she has. A possible world locked behind a gate of glass. On days when she feels tired, older somehow, and not much wiser for it all, Qi’ra has always been able to escape into it, away from tears, which sometimes seem simply inevitable, no matter how she explains the things that happen with her and the things that she makes happen. It is her secret – truly and solely her own.

Dryden delights in unearthing value that resides under lock and key, forgotten by all, even by their unsuspecting owners who trade their original, primeval worth in for novel gimmicks, for the new and the improved. For progress. _Toward what?_ _Why? No one persists in answering these questions for long if they wish to continue living._ She had first thought it a possessive impulse, a craving to own and parade what all one can own in this galaxy. It is more than that, she has slowly come to realise, for all the stories that Dryden owns, all the wealth and finery, lifeless or alive, he makes part of himself. Gradually, little by little, all of his possessions confront the erasure of their origins, with their nature becoming intricately intertwined with where he takes them on his endless drift under the blind light of the stars, through worlds which now host but an echo of what he has taken away from them. No past, no future, no life but this one. She wonders whether Dryden is looking for something he himself had lost long ago or whether everything only becomes real, tangible, and perceptible to him once he can admire within it the reflection of his own will.

With that she stops breathing again. Cold wind blows in through the space that Han’s reappearance in her life has left in the defences around her heart and soul, and it must be only a matter of time before Dryden realises this and tips the scales. He has already sent her with them; but not for the reason she had hoped he had. And so, in her neat little shock, Qi’ra fails to respond in time; in any way at all, when even a correctly tuned silence would do. These secret parts of her host the delicate balance of pain upon which she continues to steer her life even when her life seems to be taken out of her hands, and these parts of her are equally capable of prompting the making or breaking of what makes her human.

‘Another one of you. What do you think?’ he asks, lazily uncoiling from around her.

Yet, amazingly, when he searches for Qi’ra’s eyes – for answers, for errors, for need – …

‘Is it the way his life seems like a near-miss of your own?’ and, by the stars, if that does not make her wish he would simply shut up and distract himself with her nothing ever will. ‘You wanted it very much, did you not? Does it still make you fond?’

…somehow Dryden fails to notice her struggle.

_Yes! Yes! Yes!_

She wants to scream in his face, since of course he would guess correctly. If there ever was a single talent that had made him, it was probably the knack he had for picking people apart, _literally_ , as well as through peeling loose all their desires and fears without any apparent effort at all. Was that not just her luck? And even when she is weighing whether it is worth angering him on purpose just to break this awful spell, Qi’ra recognises the first hints of fury that threatens to overtake her. She is furious with herself, with him, with Han. With the unfairness of it all. With the way the things she puts to death over and over just will not remain buried. She is his creature – is that not enough?

Yet, the oddly void expression that graces his sweetly emaciated features appears to be out of place for the occasion. Is this not a scenario they have practiced before then? Her giving and him taking; her creating, pretending, learning, and him disassembling, confiding, stitching her up. What has she missed?

With a tender touch against the sores he has left beside her breasts in his thinly-veiled irritation with her tonight, he coaxes her, taming his impatient curiosity. He is being careful not to hurt again. _He is always careful the second time around._ Qi’ra becomes uncomfortably hesitant herself when Dryden goes off the script like this, since she is never sure whether the feeling his affection instils in her does not scare her more than his inhumanity. At the end of the day, it has always eluded her – what it is that he seems to be searching for in her. Or, just as likely, she simply has not wanted to give it any serious thought, lest she would have had to consider believing it. So far the following rule has held: for as long as Qi’ra continues not being the same as yesterday, the Passenger can never find her, even if he should figure out and devour all of her other weaknesses. And until Dryden likes her, Qi’ra is safe. There is no proper name for this thing between them.

_It is what it is._

And yet, something about that bizarre tenderness he is holding her gaze with, and something about him knowing her like this, perhaps, compels her to stroke his hair, his face – warm and really quite ghastly like this –, and actually nod in response to his questions.

And when her nightmare only smiles lightly in return, it turns out it is Qi’ra who has not been paying attention.

_He does not notice – he does not notice – he does not!_

Part of her suddenly discovers herself flipping furiously through the notes she keeps on him, attempting desperately to find something, _anything_ at all on Dryden Vos’ heart – a chapter that she had learned was a delirious, dangerous delusion to keep, even if it was supposed to complete the edition. How could she possibly use and predict something she does not even know exists?

Though, isn’t she being such a little liar just now; and how could she possibly stop if she no longer sees the point in recalling what is what? After all, they have been playing this little game for long enough for both to start casting doubt on the other’s ends. And all the while, one silently growing part of her – one she sometimes thinks she would have felt deeply ashamed about once upon a time – has hungered for the oblivion he offers her. Untouchable, irreverent, bewitched path above the bent backs of the wretched in the uncaring misery of the cosmos. _In for an inch, in for a mile, my sweet-sweet girl._ No life but this one. When had that stopped mattering to her? Because some part of her just wants to… let him. And when he does, lips ghosting over her neck, Qi’ra sinks further into the cool sheets, regretting who knows what exactly; she has lost count.

‘You realise, my dear, that _nothing_ he could scrape together could ever make me change my mind about you.’

And there’s the truth. Where she would ordinarily expect him to bite and lay down a reminder of where they stand in relation to each other, Qi’ra could now swear, after having listened to his voice for what feels like forever – she could _swear_ that Dryden means to reassure her. A promise. Perverse, as he is, but honest.

‘I would hate you to,’ she whispers back, and grips his hair until he acquiesces and looks her in the eye. This time she is positive that he is giving away far more than he takes from her. That he _wants_ more than he should ever let her know he cares to have.

Perhaps they do deserve each other. Dryden had taught her to look out for that narrow space in-between what their victims wished was the truth and what was actually the case. One must nurture it, he had told her, for within there lies the opportunity to shape their reality. All him.

All her now.

There was no shame in doing what you were good at.

Her stomach sinks at how she will probably never manage to squash that weed of a part of her that shudders in satisfaction, and silent despisal, at getting her due, at feeling wanted and understood in a world that has been trying to eat her since birth. He knows exactly what he is, and that is why he had bought her and that is why she had stayed with him. Despite that terrifying, derisive smile, full of blood. For Qi’ra _wants_ that power, to shape and to move, and to never go hungry. Despite knowing, though it may as well not register to her in moments like these, that she is craving something so addictive, and from the worst possible person, that it would become the end of her. As it will become the end of him.

_What else is there for you? Be serious._

And is it not just obvious what she likes by now, she thinks, as she rides him to exhaustion.

But Qi’ra is beginning to pay attention at last.

And the rest of her - the sane, survivor part of her - starts making notes under the long-abandoned chapter.

Loving Qi’ra was a losing game.

She ought to at least let _Han_ know about his addiction.

-

Once upon a time on Corellia, a poor boy fell incredibly ill. He could no longer run the streets and was no longer worth much to have around as he could barely roll off his sack behind the water tanks - and that was no fun. And his fellow brothers and sisters smelled his weakness from a mile away and left him to his fever dreams.

So he remained, feeling at once too hot, then too cold, and for prolonged periods of time, he felt nothing at all. And at the time, that had seemed like a bliss he could have happily drowned in without knowing much at all about what all he would have lost had he given in. But he saw things during that time, too. He saw clean water pour into his bowl. He saw food appear. And, after another long session of oblivion, he felt pills fall onto his tongue. Once, he even imagined he saw a girl pace hesitantly before the water tanks, wary of the passers-by who could have figured out her secret – that by always choosing to keep death’s final release at bay, you could be free that very same day. That she herself must have been holding such a belief for otherwise she would surely not be pacing here, in the gutter with him, under soft neon lights.

He was glad she had decided to stick by him.

But when, long after his recovery that winter, they happened to meet up behind the abandoned Tomik Tarsky’s hyperdrive factory, sharing a whiskey neat he had lifted off some meal ticket, and he had finally gathered enough courage to tell her and thank her, she just scrunched up her pretty features and laughed in his face.

‘That ain’t me,’ and, ‘You _know me!_ ’

How else had he gotten back on his feet then?

A shrug. ‘Lucky break, maybe.’

When Oksana Floren, Deputy Assistant Administrator to the Vice Admiral of the Federation of the Trade Route Allocation and Monetization, sucker punches the flyboy from Corellia – for absolute, unthinking degeneracy -, and returns his lucky charm, Han knows this is going to work. _He knows her!_

And maybe it could. _Maybe_ , she smiles.

But Qi’ra has shaken hands with death, tried out its alternatives, and she no longer wants anything to do with sheer luck and fever dreams on her way to freedom.

_One I design._

Luck had brought them both this far, perhaps, but it had always left her feeling so very alone under its mocking hands. Whoever it is that is deserving of its unconditional love -

She ain’t it.

-

As the engines purr into life inside the belly of the great black beast that cuts their world’s bleeding horizon in half and Qi’ra is stripped of everything for the third time in her evanescent life, she wonders what price Han’s golden dice would have fetched her.

_‘For luck?’ she smiles, looking at him, wishing for it to be true._

_‘Damn right!’ he nods, eyes ahead, aiming for the future._

Yet it turns out that luck has its own way with her. Before she is allowed to enter the Kalevalan star yacht they wash her, clothe her, vaccinate her, and tag her. Once aboard, they feed her, and it is truly superior to anything she has ever tasted. She realises that it would be better to know the price of things before accepting them, but nobody asks her or expects her to be able to pay. She cannot shake the feeling though that the eyes of fortune that smile upon her today, now that she is leaving Corellia behind, feel like the beginning of a lifelong betrayal in the guise of a blessing she has always sought. But Qi’ra will take it – she will take anything she can get.

For now.

Eventually, she will forge what luck deals her into something of her own.


	2. Notes

\---//---

Background information from Mur Lafferty’s Solo adaptation, Rae Carson’s Most Wanted, the artbook, and various articles/interviews:

  1. While still scrumratting on Corellia, Han has the habit of being chronically late to everything.  

  2. Comparatively, Han is instinct and heart to Qi’ra’s planning and mind. They build on each other’s strengths, though they start off as in competition with each other in MW for the position of a Head Boy/Head Girl with the White Worms. Qi’ra is genuinely confused by Han’s willingness to stick his neck out for others, since she admits to herself that she would not respond in kind. And it is not so much that Qi’ra’s impression of Han changes over the time she spends with him but rather than that she becomes more willing to believe Han’s way is also a legitimate possibility for her. Unfortunately, that is not the case, and it becomes a deeply-rooted source of bitterness for her.  

  3. After getting captured at Coronet Spaceport, Lady Proxima sells Qi’ra to Sarkin Enneb, a slave dealer. We know little about him other than that whereas Proxima wants to cut out Qi’ra’s tongue as punishment, he insists on having it kept intact before he buys her. Qi’ra tells herself that the slave dealer must have seen something in her that he had deemed worth the trouble to cultivate for the sake of selling her to Crimson Dawn. However, earlier on it is presented as more of a matter of Sarkin not being able to ‘beat the fight out of her’ after which the human trafficker ends up cutting his losses and getting rid of her.  

  4. Judging by how Qi’ra calls the time she had to spend with Sarkin Enneb the type of “bad situation” compared to which being enthralled to a powerful, homicidal sociopath is relatively okay, one must wonder how substantially worse could her situation have really been before Dryden Vos, out of all people, “helped her out”.  

    * It’s out of the frying pan and into the fire all the way with her.
    * Humans rationalise in order to maintain their sanity.  

  5. In the novelisation, Qi’ra’s first reaction when Han hands her the coaxium before the White Worms take him away at the beginning of the film is to want to make her way to the spaceport without him.  

  6. She likes to be in charge, informed, and prepared. Qi’ra is out of her element and vulnerable when she cannot reliably plan ahead or advance her own interests. Being a pragmatist who has never owned anything beautiful ever at all, she genuinely _likes_ nice things (not necessarily out of greed), and enjoys the feeling of having influence over others. There are makings of a careerist in her no matter what she does.  

  7. Qi’ra spends nearly a year with her mind still set on escaping Crimson Dawn before coming to an understanding with Dryden. He makes it clear to her that though she may crave freedom, she will never be free again, unless she prefers to die. She even considers fighting him, giving some indication of how desperate and serious she still is about getting out, but he dismisses her out of hand as absurd. Instead, he offers to nurture her killer instinct (she manages to kill a guard on her last attempt) and trains her, effectively, as an enforcer. Which is unsurprising, considering that he too used to be one, and even less unsurprising considering that you don't bother with Teräs Käsi unless you are not satisfied with your current employment sithuation. During their training, he once deprived her of her senses completely. Somewhat more importantly, however, he knows to entice Qi'ra with “the finest things” which she could enjoy “not only as his slave” if she were willing to re-evaluate and see the opportunities he is offering her. Indicating he reads people well (which, to be fair, is not difficult given Qi’ra’s background) or has first-hand experience with what life on the streets is like. A sociopath possesses a defunct empathy apparatus, not a defunct intellect regarding human emotions.  

  8. Dryden acts very much as a corruptor to Qi’ra, encouraging everything that they have in common and, of course, everything that makes her more vulnerable to him and, therefore, easily controllable. When, comparatively, Han and Qi’ra oppose each other in inherent moral inclinations and, therefore, balance the vessel that they are in out somewhat, Dryden and Qi’ra just make the ship capsize.  

  9. At some point during that time, Dryden decides to send Qi’ra after Sarkin Enneb – a kill that Qi’ra is later too ashamed to mention to Han on the Falcon in fear of him looking at her differently.  

  10. By the time of the film Margo acts as a concierge, handling all guest amenities on board the First Light. Qi'ra, on the other hand, is in the advisor role.  

  11. Dryden Vos is ‘near-human’. The striations we see on his face are linked to his circulatory system activity and adrenaline levels. Since he apparently does not appreciate people taking interest in his species, Qi’ra has a slightly less prosaic and more mysticised understanding of what happens when his temper gets the better of him – she calls the dark red that passes under his skin The Passenger.  

  12. Qi’ra’s and L3’s conversation on the Falcon is considerably extended in the novelisation. L3 is probably to be credited for making her ponder about what really is it about her relationship with Dryden that keeps her going back to him; something L3 implies is a psychological restraining bolt, since for all intents and purposes, she could just make a run for it during the Kessel Run and even have herself presumed dead in the process. It is not mere fear (Qi’ra possesses a core of steel), since fear had not stopped her from risking her life for nearly a year when attempting to escape from the First Light.  

  13. Though Han appears to be in denial about most things that have to do with Qi'ra, he does display at least some awareness of the sordid relationship he finds her in. It's very much a case of everyone sort of presuming it's obvious, then ignoring it, then realising it really isn't (not even for Qi'ra or Dryden).  
  
_‘Seems you already know my top lieutenant.’ He smiled at Qi’ra. Han wasn’t sure if it was a look of ownership or romantic love or fatherly affection. It was complex, and all Han knew was that he didn’t like it.  
_
  14. In what is probably one of the best scenes in the entire novelisation as concerns the distance between Han’s and Qi’ra’s mental models of the world, Han overhears L3’s and Qi’ra’s conversation. And, when she runs into him straight after, inquires outright about what has been done to her.  
  
She refuses to give him the details, as it is “over and done with, and no amount of _what if_ and _if only_ will change that.” Brutal and efficient. However, she also lies to Han about not even recalling Sarkin Enneb, choosing to keep him in the dark even when his naivety appears to frustrate and confound her. For example, when Han seems to have some trouble asking after whether Dryden had hurt her, Qi’ra’s response is immediate and that of no nonsense: “Of course he hurt me, Han. I was – am – a slave…”  
  
Her annoyance turns into anger only when Han lets his jealousy slip and seems to take personal offence at her relationship with Dryden (which, in her official job description, concerns her managing his schedule, strategic advice, and her calming influence on him). At which she makes it clear to him that all she does is only to survive. Her conflicted feelings and resentment over how things turned out years ago on Corellia (him getting out, her not) is also on display here. Their conversation ends with Qi’ra pleading with him to understand that they are no longer the people they were, however much she may wish to turn back time, but Han remains unconvinced.  

  15. _“As much as Dryden seemingly has a hold over Qi'ra,” says Bettany, “she has a hold over him too. He’s fascinated by her. Whatever the nature of their relationship is, as close as this total sociopath is able to, he loves her in a surprisingly deep way, probably as a reflection of himself.”_ And _“I think it’s an ownership thing. I think he recognises something in Qi’ra he thinks he can help develop, and that he can mentor. I just don’t think Qi’ra sees it the same way.”_ And _“It’s creepy. Super complicated and super creepy.”_  
  
Not to mention Michael K Williams’ “love triangle” comments.  
  
I have some huge-huge reservations about romanticising what is quite possibly one of the most disturbing yet realistic abusive relationships in the SW universe, but one of the perks of writing (and acting, I suppose) is the opportunity to place yourself safely inside the head characters in whose case the term “complicated” probably is the nicest way of putting it, and to explore issues you would not wish upon anyone.




End file.
